How to make best use of traveling time as a professional
If you travel to your office daily and your daily commute is more than 30 minutes there are good chances that you would soon get weary of travelling daily to work. As I travel daily to work I notice that majority of us are busy browsing social feeds, messaging people out of boredom and watching some or other form of media while only a few are busy with their books/novels and some others eagerly checking scenery or checking someone out on the way.
Whether we travel via bus,trains or cab we are still sacrificing a lot of our time daily without even remembering one productive thing we acheived while traveling. Chances are daily dose of social feed in the morning might be doing more harm than good but that is a point for some other time.
For now let's focus on things we can actually do that can make this time worth our while.
We have our smartphones with us almost all of the time and with internet connectivity and speeds getting better day by day we have a device at our disposal which can make us semi productive if not completely productive while travelling as long as we don't drive to work ourselves.
So here is a list of things that can actually help you in better travel time utilisation:-
1) Focus on hobbies
Although as we grow up we become more career focused and leave almost all of our hobbies for the weekend or even completely stop them.
You can watch videos or read articles to enhance your knowledge about your hobbies daily.
2) Priorities your daily tasks
No matter what is your profession there are deadlines to be met, targets to be achieved and weekly objectives to be met.
Traveling time can be effectively used to get your priorities straight for the rest of the day.
3)Listen to podcasts/Read novels
Reading books/eBooks that interest you can not only enhance your knowledge but give you good insights while making decisions in the long run. It sometimes feels great to be lost in reading your favourite novel, imagining the characters and stories that take shape in the mind's imaginative eyes leaving the world around behind. Listening to podcasts of your favourite personalities can also be a great way to keep oneself motivated throughout the day.
4)Learn a new language
Apps like duolingo have made learning new languages more interesting and fun. Learning a new language can help in the long run while traveling, dealing with overseas clients and even impress your friends out of the blue.
5)Learn online professional courses
Availability of free and paid courses on apps like udacity, udemy and coursera has fundamentally changed the way we can hone our professional skills.
Most of these apps have an option to download courses and watch them whenever we want to.
Finishing a few chapters everyday while traveling can greatly enhance our skills in the long run.
We live in knowledge era today where having deep insightful knowledge of our field can only keep our value in the job market. Learning new things everyday and utilizing even tiniest amount of spare time effectively is the only way through which one can hope to achieve a significant position in their career. So next time you feel like browsing through social media while traveling just think about how those precious minutes can used in some other productive manner.
